Compassion is intrinsic to human experience and reflects our nature as social beings and our need for interconnectedness. In nursing, compassion is an important ethical value that encompasses sensitivity to the distress or suffering of others, along with a commitment to try to relieve that suffering. By providing compassionate care nurses assure their patients that their conditions and concerns are being heard, recognized and acted upon. Yet throughout the world an increasing number of people are becoming marginalized due to social, economic and political forces that shape how societies work and the way human beings interact with one another. This results in severe inequities in health for vulnerable groups. The privatization of healthcare services with a customer service model seems to be gaining control making marketplace rather than compassionate nursing care the overall framework. In commodity based healthcare systems the major interest is monetary and healthcare interactions become dehumanized and even scripted. The purpose of this panel presentation is to examine how phenomenological practices may assist us to a) expose social and health inequalities through rich experiential accounts; b) foster the creation of sensitive and compassionate health care environments; and c) inform the development of responsive health care practices that will lessen the burden of inequality thatthe most vulnerable bear. We propose that hermeneutic phenomenological practices have the power to elucidate and reveal mechanisms of inequality in health care environments. We also suggest that the very phenomenon of inequality demands that we take a critical stance that examines the forces that perpetuate marginalization, oppression, and inequality. In this paper, we return to the metaphor of the face described by Emmanuel Levinas and the critical works of Enrique Dussel and Paulo Freire totackle the deleterious effects of neoliberal market driven healthcare models in the provision of compassionate nursing care for vulnerable groups.We revisit the need to pay attention to the nursing ‘how are you?’ and the ethical moment that this question evokes when we encounter the other in a face to face situation. The ethical moment that is born when a nurse asks ‘how are you?’ opens the door to deal with whatever the particular situation demands. The ‘how are you?’ question is no longer a mere social interaction but the very means to enact compassionate care in the face of pain, suffering, and inequality. The ethical moment is a lived existential instance that introduces us into the mystery of being human, of suffering, and death. Our exploration leads us to suggest that in the face of another human being whose suffering is aggravated by the injustice of inequality there is no escape from their undeniable call to respond and repair the burden of their pain. This is the ultimateethical imperative that the face of the other, the one who lives in exteriority, demands.

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